The number of Japanese enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities in the 2014-2015 academic year fell 1.4 percent from the previous year, while enrollment by international students there overall rose 10.0 percent for the largest gain in 35 years, the Institute of International Education said Monday.
The 19,064 Japanese made up the eighth-largest group, dropping one spot from the previous year, and accounted for 2.0 percent of the 974,926 international students in U.S. colleges, the nonprofit foundation said.
China remained in the top position, sending 304,040 students (31.2 percent) excluding those from Hong Kong, for an increase of 10.8 percent.
Japan was the leading sender of students to the United States from 1994 to 1999, with the number peaking at a little over 47,000 in the 1997-1998 academic year.
The second- and third-largest groups of international students in the U.S. came from India and South Korea, with Saudi Arabia coming in fourth.
Of the 20.3 million students in the U.S. higher education system in 2014-2015, 4.8 percent were from other countries.
In a survey of U.S. college students' choice of overseas study destinations for the 2013-2014 academic year, Japan remained 10th, enrolling 5,978 of the 304,467 Americans studying abroad.